Looking back at the meals we had over Christmas, I am grateful for the amazing produce we get in this country. I am also grateful we have friends and family with whom to share these meals, and lovely children who helped with so much of the cooking.
Here are the side dishes we had with our main courses, and the desserts we had for some of the dinners. Most of the vegetables are ‘standards’ i.e. we make them every year. One variation on the regular griddled broccoli (from Yotam Ottolenghi’s first cookbook) was to top it with a crunchy mix of chopped cashew nuts fried with chilli crisp/ chilli oil and panko breadcrumbs. This was inspired by a NY Times Cooking recipe and it was a total success.
ONE APPETISER
Potato latkes with sour cream, smoked salmon and pickled radish
TWO SALADS
Chicory, citrus and walnuts
Radicchio with lamb’s lettuce and a French vinaigrette
MANY SIDE DISHES
Christmas Red Cabbage
Cauliflower two ways: turmeric roasted and with cheese sauce
Potatoes two ways: sliced as a Dauphinois and regular roasted
Brussels sprouts two ways: roasted with chestnuts and sliced raw with parmesan and toasted walnuts (from Josh McFadden’s Six Seasons with Vegetables, see an online recipe here)
Parsnips and carrots roasted with olive oil, maple syrup and wholegrain mustard
Our new favourite way with broccoli, with a fried cashew nut, chilli crisp and panko topping
Christmas is not Christmas without Pigs In Blankets
SOMETHING SPECIAL
An intricate and time-consuming Vegetable Chartreuse (see recipe here): thank you to Junior 1 who has obviously inherited his father’s Patience Gene
A FEW GOOD DESSERTS
Chestnut and Rum Milles Crepes from Mille Patisserie (thank you Nottingham Cousin)
Biscoff the Red-nosed Reindeer chocolate cake from Flavourtown Bakery (thank you D-i-L)
A slice of home-made Gateau Invisible aux Pommes served with miso caramel and whipped cream (thank you Brasenose Girl). It was very much a visible cake but being utterly delicious it did disappear in the end. More notes on the cake at the end of the post
Junior 2 decorated a home-made fruit cake with marzipan, fashioning a cheeky snowman for the centre
I made one Holiday Fir Tree Cake: the recipe remains the same but happily my camera now takes better photos
Finally, what is a Gateau Invisible aux Pommes? A cursory glance on the Internet came up with explanations: this is a cake composed of layers and layers of thinly sliced apples encased in a batter, baked until the apples collapse hence the ‘invisible’ name in its title. One recipe I found looks like it would work. I’ll make it a joint translation + baking project sometime soon.
January and February are never dull months for us as we have one family birthday in each of Jan/ Feb plus Chinese New Year. I make that (at least) three cakes we will need. Time to get back to baking and to the kitchen.